New England is known for its
changing seasons: vibrant falls,
snow-packed winters, spring
thaws, and warm summers cycle
around the calendar. But there’s
another season in New England that has
only changed once in the past 16 years.

Seasons Buffet at Mohegan Sun—the
second largest casino in the U.S.—opened
when the Uncasville, Connecticut, resort
debuted in 1996. Until last year, it remained
relatively untouched because revenues
were consistently strong, especially
at a property with more than 30 different
places to eat.

In 2010, management analyzed guest
scores and saw unmet potential instead of
steady success, so a $10 million “change
of Seasons” was initiated, shutting the old
buffet down in February 2011 and re-opening
in July 2011.

“The original Seasons had about a 74%
guest satisfaction rating, and we were getting
a lot of requests for larger menu variety
and more value,” says Mark Smith, director
of F&B at Mohegan Sun. “Once the new
Seasons opened, our guest scores went over
80% right away, and we average around 84%
or higher now. It’s definitely a testament to
what’s being produced on the buffet.”

In addition to improved scores, revenues
increased too, due to a bump in prices. For
adults, breakfast went from $11.95 to $15.00,
and lunch and dinner from $18.95 to $21
and $25, respectively. Kids eat for approximately
$10 less than adults do, depending on
the meal period.

Since covers remain high, often surpassing
the old Seasons, annual revenues have risen
from around $16,000,000 to $22,000,000,
operating on a food cost of 40%.

“On a good Saturday here with breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, we’ll see 6,000 people and
$100,000 in revenue. About one-third of our
food cost goes through Seasons, so we really
needed to knock this update out of the park,”
says Richard Zazzaro, VP of F&B.

Vegas-Style Variety
Before any changes were put in motion at
Mohegan, Zazzaro and his team developed a
plan to transform Seasons into a state-of-the-art,
high-volume buffet that would keep their
traditional New England clientele
happy while attracting more international
customers, especially those
from Asia [for more on Mohegan’s
Asian demographic, see sidebar.]

In September of 2010, Zazzaro
traveled to Las Vegas to gather ideas
for the new Seasons, eating at 20 different
casino buffets there. The ones
that impressed him served smaller
batches of food, executed front-of-the-house cooking, and maintained
smooth customer “flow” during
service—all ideas later incorporated
into the new Seasons.

To accurately emulate a contemporary
Vegas-style buffet, executives
at Mohegan decided to permanently
close the resort’s other buffet, Sunburst,
so it wouldn’t compete against
the new Seasons, and expanded the
existing Seasons footprint by about
20%, finishing with 26,000 square
feet and an additional 200 seats—
just under 800 total.

They also expanded the buffet line
to 250 feet and radically changed
the original template for food display
and delivery. “The old Seasons was
double-sided with chafers, so guests
had an ‘A’ side and a ‘B’ side. Whatever
was found on one side was duplicated
on the other,” says Smith.

The new Seasons showcases eight
visible cooking stations behind a
winding buffet line, so customers
can watch food being prepared and
ask staff questions about menu items
or ingredients.

“We transferred our labor to the
front. Now the person who used to
work a tilt skillet in the back is working
a pizza oven or using the woks at
our Asian station. Our New England
station has a flat-top kitchen suite, so
what the customer sees actually looks
like a kitchen, with pot racks and
utensils hanging around it. It looks
very natural and not institutional,”
says Zazzaro, who adds that about
70% of the menu produced at Seasons
is made in front of the guest.

Hot prepared food is put in residential-style vessels and placed on
induction tops or hot shelves, while
cold items are often placed on chilled
platters or in iced wells. The overall
result is contemporary and “cost
effective because we’re not overproducing,”
says Executive Chef Richard
Doucette. “We can adjust our volume
based on actual guest numbers each
day. The food turns over faster, and it
stays fresher in smaller dishes.”

Menu Mastery
Even the most stylish cast iron, ceramic,
and stainless steel vessels are
useless if the food inside them doesn’t
meet customer expectations. It’s no
coincidence the largest station on the
buffet is based on New England cuisine,
and that menu had to stay true
to what Seasons’ core guests demand.

Satisfying their main customer
base gave the F&B team at Mohegan
the freedom to take the rest of
the menu in an updated direction,
with modern takes on Asian cuisine,
barbecue, Italian, and Mediterranean
dishes and desserts, attracting
younger guests in the process.

The Dessert Station in particular
was completely overhauled from the
previous Seasons. Gone are the giant
portions, replaced with single-bite
treats. “Now guests feel comfortable
taking multiple desserts because
they’re smaller, like a three-ounce
piece of cake that’s individually decorated,’
says Doucette.

While the new dessert template
has been a hit, removing made-to-order
omelets was not. “We tried
to do eggs in a frittata style, and
our regular customers went nuts,”
Zazzaro recalls. “After about four
days, we put some induction burners
out there with an omelet chef and
brought it back.”

Ice cream was another area needing
a tweak. Zazzaro originally used a
self-serve, soft-serve ice cream station
when the new Seasons opened,
but, “it was a nightmare. Customers
were often messy, and the place
looked like a wreck, so we went to a
hard dip scoop instead,” he says.

A progressive menu decision that
was an instant success was the inclusion
of as many as 20 gluten-free
items, as well as sugar-free desserts,
throughout the buffet. The food is
clearly marked and placed among
the regular items, not buried at
the end of each station as an afterthought.
“Our cooks are always ready
to explain to the guest which items
have nuts or contain allergy-sensitive
ingredients,” says Karen Higgins,
restaurant manager at Seasons.

Future Flow
While much thought went into menu
planning (there are more than 200
total items on the buffet, and seasonal
dishes are added quarterly),
an equal amount of work went into
deciding how guests would navigate
the new footprint. Instead of customers
lining up on one end and moving
through the buffet linearly, there are
“plate points,” where guests simply
walk up, grab a plate, and work a
“zone” of the buffet.

Initially, some guests were confused
by the non-linear approach,
raising the average stay in the buffet
from 55 minutes to nearly 70
minutes, but with staff help, they
learned to navigate the stations, and
turnover times are now under an
hour again.

Another learning curve for customers
was understanding that they
didn’t need to overload their plates
but could take advantage of the new
smaller portions to sample more of
the menu in multiple trips. Hot food
is consumed before it gets cold, leading
to higher guest scores.

“When customers walk through
our door now, there’s amazement that
the price point went up just a little
bit, and in return they feel they’re
getting the value they seek in their
dining experience,” says Smith. “And
they continue to come back, day in
and day out.”

Given its location in the casino, Seasons Buffet at Mohegan Sun
has to be spot-on, because it’s on the spot.

Mohegan Sun is located just a few hours outside some of
the biggest cities in the Northeast, particularly New York and
Boston. Because of this, bus travel to the resort from these
metropolitan areas is heavy, particularly with Asian-Americans
and Asian tourists, who represent between 800,000 and
1.1 million of Mohegan’s visitors annually.

There’s an entrance at the Connecticut casino resort dedicated
to unloading and loading those busloads of Asian customers,
and that’s also where Seasons Buffet is located. “We
have a huge Asian clientele, so we knew our Asian food had to
be spot on,” says Mark Smith, director of F&B, Mohegan Sun.

A large part of the $10 million Seasons renovation was dedicated
to a live-action, pan-Asian cooking station—the second
largest station in the outlet, after New England cuisine.

Menu items cover Japan (fresh sushi), China (fried rice and
noodles cooked and served in small woks), and Korea (kim
chee), with more than 20 total items available.

The result has been a hit for Seasons, not just in offering
familiar food to those visitors, but in “giving them a chance
to explore our other stations and try unfamiliar items too,”
says Executive Chef Richard Doucette. —MC

Labor of LoveBuffet revamp raises staff morale.

When Mohegan Sun decided to revamp its long-standing Seasons Buffet
with live cooking stations instead of a traditional chafing dish line,
it also meant an increase in labor to execute the new concept.

“It’s probably 10% more than what it used to be,” says Richard Zazzaro,
VP of F&B. “We added about 15 cooks and another 20 servers.
We’re still finding efficiencies, because our cooks were used to monitoring
and refilling chafers in the old concept, and now they’re preparing
food in front of the guest.”

This “change of Seasons,” however, is also why employee morale
has improved in the buffet, according to Zazzaro. The 1,200-room
resort is home to more than a dozen third-party and celebrity chef-branded
restaurants, so the success of a homegrown concept such as
Seasons has become a point of pride for staff.

“When I talk to cooks in Seasons now, I’ll casually mention, ‘You know
that you do 1,400,000 covers a year, and that 35% of our revenue comes
from here?’” says Zazzaro. “They know this is a big deal. Sometimes people
get complacent and say, ‘Yeah, I work in the buffet, I make mashed
potatoes. Big deal.’ We needed to break that mold a little bit.” —MC